Gary Gaussiran, the only Canadian to fish on an Operation Bass tour, says it’s hard to catch large stringers of bass in the American South. See, he’s used to pulling out 50 to 100 bass a day from the untapped bass reserves in the lakes of his native Quebec.
Hailing from La Chute, near Montreal, Gaussiran is in his first year on the EverStart Batteries Series Eastern Division tour. From Florida, to Alabama, to South Carolina and so on, he puts on the miles like all of his fellow anglers traveling from tournament to tournament. However, Gaussiran’s odometer has really been stretched this year.
He says he’d love it if Operation Bass “ever does the Northern Division they’ve been talking about.”
It would mean fewer miles for the EverStart’s lone Canadian pro angler and, he insists, the possibility of some real heavy stringers for everybody. He says Canadian lakes don’t receive the same kind of pressure from anglers as they do in the South, partly due to a shorter season and partly because of bass fishing’s relative unpopularity north of the border.
“In Canada, bass fishing is not a prestige sport like it is in the U.S.,” he explains. “Up there it’s mostly salmon fishing.”
But that doesn’t mean Canada’s not primed for a big-time pro bass tour. On the contrary, Gaussiran – who manages Quebec’s only competitive bass circuit – says Canadian lakes are brimming with bass because they’re not as heavily fished as American waters.
“Canada’s like the U.S. in 1965 when Ray Scott started tournament fishing,” he says.
He says in the fall, when the fish are preparing for the upcoming winter by gorging themselves, he will regularly catch 50 to 100 bass a day.
These are numbers from a guy who admits he never fished at all before 1991.
“It took me about three or four years to get the hang of it near home,” he says. “Now I have to get the hang of it down here.”
Granted, Gaussiran made these comments during February’s cold-weather tournament on Lake Martin, Ala., where the bass were more inclined to bite their own tongues with their chattering teeth than they were to bite a jig or a crankbait. Still, the Canadian says he is learning how to fish the different structures of American waterways.
“In Canada, we have both vegetation and structure in a single lake for bass to hide in. Down here, you have either vegetation or structure,” he says.
Gaussiran travels from tournament to tournament with his wife, Patricia, daughter, 4-year-old Catherine, and dog, Daisy. He hopes Catherine will pick up on his enthusiasm for the sport.
“She’s going to start soon,” he says.
As for Patricia, she enjoys the opportunity to spend at least some of the winter down south, out of Quebec’s winters.
At the Lake Martin tournament, she explained, “I was hoping for him to win so we could go back to Florida.” Winners of EverStart tournaments are invited to the EverStart Invitational Challenge in Cypress Gardens held in November.
There’s no telling. With plenty of tournament season left, the plucky Canuck still has plenty of opportunity to pull it off, eh?